June 28, 2013
Honey is going to run with me today, but she is a bit intimidated by the extra five minutes we are running today. This is a common fear amongst new runners. Increasing your mileage or your running time can be a scary thing. Can you do it? Will you end up in the middle of nowhere with no way to get home, dying of thirst, crawling along the road, desperate for someone to come and help you?Maybe, if you try to run much longer than you are used to and you don't plan ahead and you are running in the desert. Otherwise, you should be fine increasing your mileage by just a little bit. The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't increase your mileage by more than 10% from week to week and your long runs should follow the same formula.
So, an extra five minutes added on top of 20 minutes is a 25% increase, so that would seem to go against this rule...and it kind of does, perhaps, in Honey's case. My running times are based on my week to week times, not hers. Sorry Honey! Of course, this is the first time she has run 25 minutes and she did run a couple of other times this week. If we assume she is running 60 minutes every week, then an extra five minutes is perfectly in line with the rule of thumb. Next week, she will be running an extra 15 minutes if she runs with me every day...that would again be a 25% increase. If she had been running consistently with me while I upped my time, she would be ok.
Consistency is always the key!!
In either case, Honey did fine today. She felt that it was a lot harder to run 25 minutes instead of 20, but she did it. The next time, she will find it easier. Soon, she will think herself silly that she couldn't even think about running only 15 minutes. That's the way it goes. The longer you run, and the longer you make your longest runs the easier the shorter runs feel.
Here are our numbers:
Time: 25:00
Distance: 2.12 miles
Pace: 11:48/m
Max Pace: 9:59/m
Calories: 265
Avg HR: 111
Avg HR: 111
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